Daniella tried to bake cookies for her family. She didn’t tell anyone because she wanted it to be a surprise act of charity. Unfortunately, she did not have all the right ingredients available, and the cookies came out more like round biscuits that required a swig of milk to be able to down each bite.

“This is what they are supposed to look like,” her father told her on the next day, handing her a chocolate chip cookie from the local bakery. “Keep on trying. Don’t give up.”

Although those were tough words for Daniella, she realized that her father wasn’t trying to humiliate her, but to motivate her to improve. From that time on, Daniella didn’t miss an opportunity to cook and help out in the kitchen. The next month, she decided to bake cookies again. This time she started out with enough butter, more chocolate chips, and the right quantities of the other ingredients.

“Who helped you bake these this time?” asked her father, sinking his teeth into a warm and soft chocolate chip cookie. “I did them by myself.”“Amazing! You’ve learned so fast.”

It wasn’t just a cooking lesson that Daniella learned, though; it was a lesson for life. She realized that just as she had to start out with the right ingredients in order to have a good final product, it is also necessary to start out on the right track in life.

That means, first of all, knowing where you are at. What are your strengths? How about your weaknesses? What kind of friends do you have? If you were to die today, would God be happy with your life?

Second, just as Daniella looked at the ideal cookie that her father brought home, she understood that she also needed an ideal in life. What is your greatest aspiration? If you had to leave everything else aside, what would be that one thing you could hold onto forever? What kind of life do you want to look back at from eternity, once it is all over?

Third, Daniella realized that nothing worthwhile can be accomplished without hard work. This is a lesson that fewer people are coming to grasp today, due to the efforts no longer required to do what technology can do for us. Technology won’t get us to heaven, though. It is entirely up to us to persevere in our struggle for holiness, knowing that God will always give us the grace we need.

God will be pleased more by seeing our constant effort to be holy in the midst of a turbulent world than he would be by seeing us go by without ever having to struggle to be faithful to him. Pray as if everything were up to God, and work as if everything were up to you.

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